


Piloting (Works Both Ways)

by JaneTurenne



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Community: best_enemies, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-01
Updated: 2011-05-01
Packaged: 2017-10-18 21:14:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/193366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaneTurenne/pseuds/JaneTurenne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the best_enemies kinkmeme prompt "Sometimes, when two TARDISes love one another very much, they choose to express that love in ways that inflict sexy psychic feedback on their Time Lords. Shenanigans ensue."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Piloting (Works Both Ways)

**Author's Note:**

> A bit of post-Time-Flight silliness. If you haven't seen the serial, all you need to know is that the Doctor and the Master swap TARDIS parts a lot. Sexily.

The day after he and the Master meet on primordial Earth, the Doctor starts dreaming of Roman columns.

Well, no. He thinks he'd best be specific. He dreams of one particular Roman column, ordinary except for the unexpected accoutrement of a conical white light perched atop it like a very strange hat. That light begins to blink, slowly at first, and then faster, faster, more and more urgent, until a blinding flash whites out the Doctor's mental vision, and the Doctor wakes up with sweat on his forehead, a blush on his cheeks, and a sticky and unmentionable substance all over his belly.

It is, undoubtedly, a very strange occurrence. But last week the Doctor saved the universe from a race of murderous sentient conifers, so what is this to compare? Nothing, that's what. The Doctor will just have a nice shower, and forget all about it.

It might actually work, if only there weren't other nights of sleep to be getting on with.

The next night, the imagery of his dream is less strange than the soundtrack. The music playing in the back of his head most definitely doesn't belong in the subconscious of a respectable Time Lord. It belongs, undeniably and definitively, to the burlesque hall. There is absolutely no other purpose for such a piece of music than to take off one's clothes to it. And so when the Doctor dreams of the key turning in the door of his own TARDIS, and her doors opening excruciatingly, teasingly slowly, he wakes up feeling very, very dirty, as though he's just witnessed something he was most definitely never meant to see.

A shower. A shower, and a little dedicated forgetfulness. Clearly.

The third night, he dreams of two console rooms, their central columns lifting, pumping, _thrusting_ in perfect rhythm...

"All right!" the Doctor shouts, sitting bolt-upright in bed. "That's _quite_ enough, thank you very much! I don't mind what you get up to after-hours, but not in my head, if you please! What's gotten into you late..."

The Doctor stops short, considering the timing of all of this, and the specific imagery of that first dream. "No," he whispers. "Oh. Oh no. He wouldn't be stupid enough to give me a part he'd already used in his own TARDIS, would he?" The Doctor stops to consider. " _I_ wouldn't be stupid enough to give _him_ a part I'd already used in _my_ TARDIS, would I?"

The Doctor's TARDIS vibrates a little, in what the Doctor can only consider to be a satisfied sort of hum.

"Oh _bollocks_ ," the Doctor moans, and buries his head in his hands.

*

The only consolation, the Doctor thinks, is that his companions don't seem to notice anything amiss. Nyssa and Tegan haven't started asking awkward questions about time-capsule-related nightmares. It's the Doctor's psychic bond that's keeping him tuned in to his TARDIS's frequency, no doubt. But it only seems to happen when he sleeps, so that's all right then. He just won't. Sleep. Ever.

Fortunately, Time Lords don't need much in the way of sleep to function. As with humans, however, lack of sleep does tend to have a negative effect on personality. By three weeks in, he doesn't remember the last time he said a word without snapping at someone. So he supposes, as he feels himself slumping over the breakfast table one morning, he can't _really_ blame Tegan for drugging his tea.

The Doctor's TARDIS has clearly been annoyed by his avoidance tactics. He can tell, because now she's finally got the Doctor asleep, she plays _dirty_.

The Doctor dreams of his own TARDIS, materializing inside the Master's bedroom. But at the same time, what he's dreaming of is the Master's TARDIS, materializing inside _his_ bedroom. He dreams of himself asleep in bed, only it's the Master asleep in bed, too. He dreams of, knows, experiences the pleasure those TARDISes feel in occupying the very same place in space and time, the one-and-yet-two-ness of it, beautiful and whole. He feels that pleasure in his TARDIS, and the Master's TARDIS, and in his own head, and in the Master's, all at once, all four of them bound, and there's no distinction between himself and the Master in his dream, any more than there is between the two TARDISes. The bedroom they are in is the same bedroom, the bed they are in the same bed, and they're in exactly the same position on it: impossibly and endlessly nested, each of them contained by the other's skin, each of them containing the other, and one single pleasure singing in both of their minds.

It should be absolutely terrifying.

The Doctor never, never wants it to end.

*

The instant he does wake up, many, many hours later, the Doctor feels empty and bereft, as though a piece has been torn out of his own soul.

The Doctor just sits still, in his bed--where Nyssa and Tegan seem to have thoughtfully dragged him--and stares at the ceiling. And then something makes a pinging noise, and a communicator screen pops up on the far wall of the Doctor's bedroom.

The Doctor hasn't stopped to ask himself, until this very second, whether he's the only one who's been having these visions. But he knows the answer already, really. That dream, last night, couldn't possibly have been a simple fantasy.

The Doctor hesitates before accepting the call. But only for a moment.

The Doctor doesn't say anything when the Master's face pops up on his wall. The Master doesn't say anything, either. They just stare at each other, intense and a little lost. And then something occurs to the Doctor, and suddenly he's grinning.

"Master," he asks, "do you suppose this whole psychic feedback linkup works both ways?"

*

Her Time Lord has always been too clever by half, she thinks in fond exasperation. She doesn't mind the sweat on the best set of sheets, nor the shouts and cries and groans and 'Doctor!'s and 'Master!'s echoing off her walls. But some of the things those anthropoids get up to in their mindscapes are frankly _shocking_. And...well...they make her circuits tingle.

And all she was trying to do, the Doctor's TARDIS grumbles, was get a good night's sleep.


End file.
